Irix: PRNG initialization failed

[Damien Miller]

On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, Pekka Savola wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> I tried OpenSSH versions 2.1.1p4, 2.2.0p1 and the latest snapshot briefly
> on 64-bit Irix 6.5.7f an 6.5.9m.
> 
> Both times, no matter what I do, I'll get 'PRNG initialization failed
> -- exiting'.  This happens with ssh-keygen (the keys aren't even generated
> yet, ssh binary etc.)
> 
> It's clear that Irix etc. don't have a proper entropy pool like *BSD and
> Linux do, but shouldn't this be at least usable?
> 
> FWIW, consigure shows for entropy source:  Builtin (timeout 200).
> 
> I read a mention or two about entropy daemons and such, but I'm not sure
> if those should be a must to get this to run..
 
Portable OpenSSH tries to collect randomness by running commands and 
stirring their output into OpenSSL's random pool. If enough commands
fail, or not data is read from said commands then you will fail with
the above error message.

You may want to adjust the commands in the ssh_prng_cmds to suit your 
system. If you have any favourites, please send them to me for 
inclusion.

Alternately you can debug the execution of the commands by defining 
the DEBUG_ENTROPY flag in entropy.c

-d


-- 
| ``The power of accurate observation is  | Damien Miller <djm at mindrot.org>
| commonly called cynicism by those who   | @Work <djm at ibs.com.au>
| have not got it'' - George Bernard Shaw | http://www.mindrot.org